Politics Is a Joke!

Politics Is a Joke!
Author: S. Robert Lichter
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 270
Release: 2018-09-03
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0429961847

Does late night political humor matter? Are late-night comedians merely entertaining, or do they have the power to influence the way we think about politics and politicians? Politics Is a Joke! situates late night comedy in the historical context of political humor and demonstrates how the public turn to this venue for political information, and are in turn affected by it. Using exclusive data collected by the Center for Media and Public Affairs, the authors conduct a detailed and exhaustive analysis of political jokes on late night TV shows dating back to 1992 in order to pinpoint the main targets and themes of late-night comedy. Politics Is a Joke! uses a wide range of examples, from jokes about politicians' physical appearance and sex scandals to jokes about Congress and even the news media, to assess and understand the impact of political humor on political institutions, politicians and their policies and behavior. Engagingly written with analysis of jokes from comedians like Jay Leno, Conan O'Brien, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, Politics is a Joke! is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the crucial role late night comedy plays in our political universe - and anyone who enjoys a good laugh.

Political Humor Under Stalin

Political Humor Under Stalin
Author: David Brandenberger
Publisher:
Total Pages: 172
Release: 2009
Genre: Humor
ISBN:

Political Humor under Stalin is an anthology of jokes, wisecracks, and satire from the Soviet 1930s and '40s that provides a glimpse of everyday dissembling and dissent in one of the modern world's most repressive societies. More than merely a joke book, it offers no less than a folkloric counter-narrative to the official history of the USSR, as well as a ground-breaking discussion of the culture of joke-telling under Stalin.

No Laughing Matter

No Laughing Matter
Author: Steven Lukes
Publisher: Routledge & Kegan Paul Books
Total Pages: 200
Release: 1985
Genre: Humor
ISBN:

Speaking My Mind

Speaking My Mind
Author: Ronald Reagan
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 436
Release: 2004-08
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0743271114

The most important speeches of America's "Great Communicator": Here, in his own words, is the record of Ronald Reagan's remarkable political career and historic eight-year presidency.

Seriously Funny

Seriously Funny
Author: Samuel Schmidt
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
Total Pages: 296
Release: 2014-03-06
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0816598819

Political jokes exist around the world and across many types of political systems. But what purposes do they serve? Do they have an impact on politics—or on politicians? Surprisingly, scholars have paid scant attention to these significant questions. And, until the publication of this book, no one had ever systematically studied political humor in Mexico. When the first edition of this work was published in Mexico, it caused a stir. Elected officials, it turned out, had grudgingly accepted that they and their politics could be the target of jokes uttered in public, and even on television, but they were incensed that a leading academic had collected political jokes into a book and analyzed their function in a country that had experienced nearly a century of one-party rule. Now available in English for the first time, Seriously Funny is a groundbreaking work. Its goal is to examine the ways in which political humor—including nicknames, anagrams, poems, and parodies of religious prayers, in addition to jokes—has developed and operated in one country over more than four centuries. Although political humor thrives in Mexico, it is often cleverly encoded so that it doesn’t appear to be critical of government policies or officials. But, writes Samuel Schmidt, that is precisely its purpose: to question the actions and assumptions of the party in power. Schmidt argues persuasively that political jokes are acts of minor rebellion: their objective is not to overthrow a government but to correct its mistakes.

Political Humor

Political Humor
Author: Charles E. Schutz
Publisher: Fairleigh Dickinson Univ Press
Total Pages: 364
Release: 1977
Genre: Humor
ISBN: 9780838615362

Presents and seeks to explain the variety of humor in democratic politics. The humor ranges from the bawdy political comedies of Aristophanes in ancient Athens to the journalistic satires of our daily newspapers, and includes the jokes and comic invective of the people and their politicians.

Tennessee Political Humor

Tennessee Political Humor
Author: Roy Herron
Publisher:
Total Pages: 156
Release: 2000
Genre: Humor
ISBN: 9781572331020

Almost 175 years ago, Congressman Davy Crockett encountered a Massachusetts colleague in Washington. The New Englander, pointing to a farmer driving some mules along Pennsylvania Avenue, quipped: "Hello, there, Crockett, here's a lot of your constituents on parade. Where are they going?" The Tennessee frontiersman shot back, "They are going to Massachusetts to teach school." Ever since Crockett's day, Volunteer State politicians have used humor to deflate their rivals, garner votes, and keep the public amused. Often the public has laughed at them--sometimes even when they were not telling jokes. This book, the first of its kind for Tennessee, offers a broad sampling of that wonderful comic lore, enriched over the years by Democrats and Republicans alike. The stories range from extended anecdotes and tall tales to one-line "zingers." Local politics, statewide races, judicial decisions, and Capitol Hill maneuverings are all covered. Occasionally, names have been changed to protect the guilty, but more times than not, real names are used: Howard Baker, Al Gore (Senior and Junior), Estes Kefauver, and Lamar Alexander are just a few of the pols who cross these pages. There are many books about politics, but few books reveal, much less revel in, what makes politics and public service lively and fun. Tennessee Political Humor is a delightful exception--a book that invites us not just to read the stories but to tell them out loud. The Authors: Roy Herron, an attorney from Dresden, Tennessee, serves in the Tennessee Senate. He is the author of Things Held Dear: Soul Stories for My Sons. L. H. "Cotton" Ivy, who lives in Decaturville, Tennessee, has served in the Tennessee House of Representatives and was commissioner of agriculture under Gov. Ned McWherter.

A Conservative Walks Into a Bar

A Conservative Walks Into a Bar
Author: A. Dagnes
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 348
Release: 2012-09-06
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1137270349

Conservative critics argue that modern political satire, in the age of The Daily Show, has a liberal bias. A quick review of the humor landscape shows that there are very few conservative political satirists, and using personal interviews with political humorists this book explains why. The book explores the history of satire, the comedy profession, and the nature of satire itself to examine why there is an ideological imbalance in political humor and it explores the consequences of this disparity. This book will appeal to Daily Show and Colbert fans, political junkies, and anyone interested in the intersection of politics and media.

American Political Humor [2 volumes]

American Political Humor [2 volumes]
Author: Jody C. Baumgartner
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 718
Release: 2019-10-07
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1440854866

This two-volume set surveys the profound impact of political humor and satire on American culture and politics over the years, paying special attention to the explosion of political humor in today's wide-ranging and turbulent media environment. Historically, there has been a tendency to regard political satire and humor as a sideshow to the wider world of American politics—entertaining and sometimes insightful, but ultimately only of modest interest to students and others surveying the trajectory of American politics and culture. This set documents just how mistaken that assumption is. By examining political humor and satire throughout US history, these volumes not only illustrate how expressions of political satire and humor reflect changes in American attitudes about presidents, parties, and issues but also how satirists, comedians, cartoonists, and filmmakers have helped to shape popular attitudes about landmark historical events, major American institutions and movements, and the nation's political leaders and cultural giants. Finally, this work examines how today's brand of political humor may be more influential than ever before in shaping American attitudes about the nation in which we live.

The Joke Is on Us

The Joke Is on Us
Author: Julie A. Webber
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 345
Release: 2018-12-11
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1498569854

This edited volume brings together scholars of comedy to assess how political comedy encounters neoliberal themes in contemporary media. Central to this task is the notion of genre; under neoliberal conditions (where market logics motivate most actions) genre becomes “mixed.” Once stable, discreet categories such as comedy, horror, drama and news and entertainment have become blurred so as to be indistinguishable. The classic modern paradigm of comedy/tragedy no longer holds, if it ever did. Moreover, as politics becomes more economic and less moral or normative under neoliberalism, we are able to see new resistance to comedic genres that support neoliberal strategies to hide racial and gender injustice such as unlaughter, ambiguity, and anti-comedy. There is also an increasing interest with comedy as a form of entertainment on the political right following both Brexit in the UK and the election of Trump in the U.S. Several essays confront this conservative comedy and place it in context of the larger humor history of these debates over free speech and political correctness. For comedians too, entry into popular media now follows the familiar neoliberal script of the celebration of self-help with the increasing admonishment of those who fail to win in market terms. Laughter plays an important role in shaming and valorizing (often at the same time!) the precarious subject in the aftermath of global recession. Doubling down on austerity, self-help policies and equivocation in the face of extremist challenges (right and left), politics foils the critical comedian’s attempt to satirize and parody its object. Characterized by ambiguity, mixed genre and the increasing use of anti-humor, political comedy mirrors the social and political world it mocks, parodies and celebrates often with lackluster results suggesting that the joke might be on us, as audiences.